Bring Justice to the Women of Darfur

This past weekend I attended the reading of a play called In Darfur by Winter Miller. The play focuses on the plight of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur. In particular, it calls attention to the dangers Darfuri women face every day. The main character of the play is Hawa, a woman whose husband and son were killed with the rest of her family by the Janjaweed. Hawa was gang-raped and became pregnant. She does not know if the child belongs to her husband or to one of her rapists. Even after she reaches the IDP camp, she is not safe. On at least two occasions in the camp, she is beaten by soldiers inside the camp.

Rape has long been used as a tool of war because it is a demonstration of power and robs its victims of dignity. Often, a woman who has been raped is ostracized. The Janjaweed rapes black African women, hoping to impregnate them with Arab babies. Thus, rape in Darfur is not only demonstrates the oppressors' power in the region, but an attempt to eliminate the Africans living in Darfur. When the Janjaweed attacks a village, they kill, often after castrating, the men, and rape the women. Often, when women leave IDP camps to collect firewood or grass for their livestock, they are raped by Janjaweed soldiers lurking nearby. It is not only Janjaweed, however, who attack women. Soldiers in the rebel groups (such as the Sudanese Liberation Army) and the police protecting the camps are guilty as well. It is not possible to know exactly how many women have been raped, but one BBC reporter wrote last October that she had spoken with 21 women living in an IDP camp who had been raped in a period of two weeks. Other forms of violence against women include abduction and forced displacement. So far, the government in Khartoum is doing nothing to bring these rapists to justice. Write to President Omar al-Bashir and ask him to end the violence against women. Mail letters to this address:
His Excellency Lieutenant-General
Omr Hassan al-Bashir
President of the Republic of Sudan
President's Palace
PO Box 281
Khartoum
Sudan
For more extensive information on the condition of women in Darfur, visit www.amnestyusa.org/women/darfur.

Depression rates among women in Darfur lower than in other conflicts?

International Medical Corps recently released a report on depression rates among women in a Darfurian IDP camp. The report found that 31% suffered from Major Depressive Disorder, while 63% showed the emotional symptoms of depression.

Yet, as Ms. Magazine pointed out, depression rates are often much higher in other areas ravaged by conflict or genocide. For example, in 2004, a study found Major Depressive Disorder rates in Afghanistan were at about 70% for the general population, and even higher for women-- more than twice the rates found in Darfur. This seems somewhat puzzling at first. After all, Darfur is one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time!

But the Ms. Magazine article also hypothesized about the causes of this strange inconsistency:

The recent Darfur Medical Corps study was conducted in a camp where people were already receiving aid; additionally, the camp had excellent conditions, compared to other refugee and IDP camps. Therefore, the mental conditions of the majority of Darfurians who still are not receiving aid-- and are still displaced, hungry and homeless in Darfur-- are incalculably worse than the statistics reveal.

These same demographic inconsistencies plague many media reports on Darfur that I've read: journalists and statisticians can often only gain access to refugee camps, sometimes as far away as Chad, because of unsafe conditions in Darfur; yet they present their findings as representative of all the genocide's victims. In reality, although there are still grave issues within camps, conditions must be incomparably horrible in Darfur, where basic survival can be an insurmountable challenge.

This is certainly something to keep in mind when reading media and statistical reports from "Darfur"...or the camps nearby.